Underlying health condition 14 March 2020 at 8:48AM in Coronavirus support and help 2 replies 333 views

74jax

* Nothing to do with Corona Virus *
Can anyone point me to a medical definition for what is considered an underlying medical condition please? 
Everything I get brings up the ones for corona (asthma etc), but I'm just wondering what the standard definition is - outside of corona.
Is 'underlying' something you've had for 6 months... A year...? Is it diagnosed or undiagnosed? 
Purley to hopefully help me be right in a Saturday morning discussion with hubby...., 🤣
Ie is an ongoing issue for 4 years where you've been admiitted to hospital and over 4 years of various tests later, still awaiting formal diagnosis classed as underlying health issues or does it need to be diagnosed and receiving medication.
It must be defined somewhere but corona is at front of all my Google results..... 

amandacat

An underlying health condition can be anything, there is no specific time requirement for something to be classed as an underlying condition. It can be diagnosed or undiagnosed. 
For example, someone visits a GP displaying symptoms of excessive thirst. The GP decides to check for an underlying health condition and finds out the person has diabetes and this is causing these symptoms. 
Another example, a person is experiencing bad headaches. The person has high blood pressure that has already been diagnosed so the GP attributes this to their underlying health condition of high blood pressure. 
In the case of Coronavirus, someone gets extremely ill and need oxygen, they have Asthma so this is an underlying health condition that is making their illness called by Coronavirus worse. 

The term underlying conditions, refers to any medical condition a person suffers with that, when faced with another medical condition, could cause symptoms to be worse. 

mwarby

Obvious ones are breathing difficulty such as asthma or COPD. Less obvious ones might include something which surpresses the immune system, which might be kemo or similar to thing such as late stage HIV\AIDS